Hidden costs when lacking a brand system

Each time you work with an external design unit without clear brand guidelines, your business is unknowingly paying more. That money does not appear on the design invoice. It is in the hours of meetings for the brand manager, in the number of revisions exceeding the contract, and in the delayed launch timelines of one to two weeks. These costs are hidden but very real.

The number of review rounds is the money clock

A typical design project has two to three rounds of revisions as per the contract. When a brand lacks guidelines, that number increases not because the design unit is at fault but because there is no common basis to assess right or wrong from the start. Round one: the design unit guesses the colors and tone. Round two: the brand manager denies the results but explains based on personal feelings rather than clear criteria. Round three: both sides are adjusting according to personal taste, not according to brand logic.

Each additional round of review means another meeting, another cycle of revisions, and another week of delays. With a team of five, each meeting consumes about five hours of total work time when considering preparation and follow-up. Accumulated over multiple projects in a year, this number is significant.

Hidden costs in the briefing session

The brief is the foundation for the entire project. A good briefing session with a design agency that has a clear brand system usually concludes within one to two hours. Both parties have a common understanding: which colors can be used, which fonts belong to the brand, and what tone conveys the desired feeling.

When there are no guidelines, the brief turns into an on-the-spot brand discovery session. The brand manager has to explain from scratch things that should have been documented. The design unit takes notes, asks further questions, and then explains back to the team. Information passes through many intermediaries and loses accuracy at each level. This is what Marty Neumeier calls "internal drift": thousands of small decisions made by people who have not been given enough information about brand logic.

Static guidelines begin to drift away from reality within six months if there is no one proactively updating and communicating them.

Adobe, State of Creative and Marketing Collaboration, 2019

Without a system, each partner is starting over each time

Many businesses work simultaneously with multiple external units: a media company handling social media, a design unit for packaging, a product photographer, and a video editing team for advertisements. Each unit understands the brand differently because there are no common documents.

Results: images on social media use different colors than the packaging, the tone of the posts is completely different from the language on the website, and the advertising video looks like it belongs to a different brand. Customers look at it and feel the inconsistency even if they cannot explain why. According to Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass research group, distinctive brand assets only accumulate in buyers' memory when they appear consistently over time. Each deviation is a wasted opportunity to build that memory.

Guidelines are not documents to read

The most common misunderstanding is viewing brand guidelines as a rulebook to read once and then set aside. This document is actually an operational tool. It helps anyone, even newcomers or external parties unfamiliar with the company, achieve the right results without needing to ask further.

A sufficient set of guidelines does not need to be hundreds of pages long. It needs to be clear enough. Which colors with exact color codes. Which fonts are licensed and used for which cases. Where the logo is and how it should not be used. What the brand voice sounds like and what it does not. A few examples of practical applications. That alone is enough to significantly shorten most of the briefing time and greatly reduce the number of revision rounds.

McKinsey noted in a 2018 study that companies that integrate design into their operational processes, rather than keeping design in a separate department, have significantly stronger financial correlations. A specific example: a furniture company dissolved its centralized design center and had designers work directly with each department, resulting in a 10 percent increase in speed to market and a 30 percent increase in revenue.

The cost of building a system compared to the cost of not building

The question you should be asking is not "Is it worth building brand guidelines?" but rather "What is the cost of not building them each year?"

Consider this. How many external units does your business work with each year related to the brand? How many projects have more rounds of revisions than expected? How many additional hours do those extra rounds take from the brand manager, director, or department head? Multiply those hours by the actual personnel costs. Add the costs of redoing assets that do not align with the brand. Add the delays that affect product or campaign launch plans.

The cost of building a brand guidelines document is certainly a one-time expense. The cost of not building it accumulates each month, with each project, and with each new partner.

A brand does not live in a design file. It lives in every small decision made by those working on its behalf.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

Practical starting point point

Not every business needs to start with a complete system right away. With limited resources, you can begin with what will be used most in the coming year.

• Clearly specify the exact color codes for all brand colors, not just "navy blue" but the specific hex, RGB, and CMYK codes.
• Define one to two fonts that are allowed for use and specify when to use each type.
• Create a logo folder that includes all versions: light background, dark background, black and white, and minimum size.
• Write five to ten sentences describing the brand's tone of voice, including examples of correct and incorrect sentences.
• Gather three to five examples of existing assets that you feel are most relevant, to use as reference samples.

Such a document, even if only ten to fifteen pages long, is enough to significantly shorten the next briefing session with any external unit. It is enough for the brand manager not to have to be present in every meeting to explain everything from the beginning. It is enough for assets to be correct from the very first round.

Sinh Vũ often sees this most clearly with clients who have previously worked with many external parties without any guiding documents. Once they have a system in place, the question shifts from "why does this take so long?" to "why didn’t we do this sooner?"